We cruised into Huang Pu one smoggy morning. This is the port city for Canton which is now called Guangzhou. It is a huge industrial port and Huang Pu is all business. The Academy Awards were going to be broadcast on the ship that morning so we decided to stay on board to watch them instead of taking a tour into Canton. As it turned out the signal wasn’t very good…maybe we were being jammed by a certain government. So we went ashore for a walk about and to grab a bite to eat. Most of the restaurants were already closed for the afternoon but we found one Chinese restaurant which was located in a parking garage, of all places! The food wasn’t bad and we were the only gringos in the joint.
The local officials have a very strict immigration system with face to face inspection, passport scanning and photographing each passenger. It felt sort of like a scene from “Argo” when the U.S. Embassy staffers were trying to get out of Iran. This led to rather lengthy lines getting on and off the ship. But the ship’s staff had a nice little party pier-side with refreshments and music
HUANG PU IMMIGRATIONSto ease the wait for the guests. Even the Chinese officials were swaying to the music.
The next morning we arrived in Kowloon and got the premier docking space overlooking Hong Kong and the famous harbor. We didn’t have much free time for sightseeing since our computer had crashed several days prior to our arrival. We spent most of our time shopping for a new computer and then trying to rebuild all of our files, pictures and programs. It is always a bit dicey to buy electronic equipment overseas, if for no other reason than different electrical plugs and questionable international warranty, etc. We found it amazing that computers are cheaper in the U.S. than in China, where most of them are assembled! Alex, the ship’s computer manager, was a miracle worker in what he was able to salvage from our hard drive. We have an offsite backup system but we need about 12 hours on shore with a stable internet connection to download everything from our old computer again.
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